University of Central Florida STARS Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2004-2019 2010 Contact Brittany Osbourne University of Central Florida Part of the Creative Writing Commons Find similar works at: https://stars.library.ucf.edu/etd University of Central Florida Libraries http://library.ucf.edu This Masters Thesis (Open Access) is brought to you for free and open access by STARS. It has been accepted for inclusion in Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2004-2019 by an authorized administrator of STARS. For more information, please contact
[email protected]. STARS Citation Osbourne, Brittany, "Contact" (2010). Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2004-2019. 4448. https://stars.library.ucf.edu/etd/4448 CONTACT by BRITTANY OSBOURNE B.A. University of South Florida, 2007 A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Fine Arts in the Department of English in the College of Arts and Humanities at the University of Central Florida Orlando, Florida Spring Term 2010 © 2009 Brittany Osbourne ii ABSTRACT This fiction novel focuses on the Sankofa philosophy that we as human beings must learn from our past to better understand our current existence and future; however, sometimes we choose to ignore or suppress the past because remembering it may be too hurtful. When we forget what happened yesterday our outlook on today and tomorrow becomes distorted. Contact is a novel that attempts to explore how “living in the now” alone becomes problematic because the past—if not remembered—will come back to haunt you. The erasure of the line between Diasporic Africans and their African past is the primary theme explored.